Backwards
National Poetry Writing Month, Day 3.
Today’s poem arrived via an older prompt at www.napowrimo.net. I was stuck on the drafts I was working on and went hunting for another prompt that I (maybe) wouldn’t overthink. Et voilà:
“I’d like you to try an odd little exercise that I have had good results with. Today, I challenge you to write a poem backwards. Start with the last line and work your way up the page to the beginning. Another way to go about this might be to take a poem you’ve already written, and flip the order of the lines and from there, edit it so the poem now works with its new order. This will probably feel a bit strange (and really, it is a bit strange), but it just may help you see the formal ‘opening’ and ‘closing’ strategies of your poems in a new way!”
Right away I tried this with a few older poems—it’s fascinating to flip the order of the lines. But then I thought of my youngest son’s poem (pictured above) and wanted to give his method a spin.
At some point, I died. My hair grew gray. My words grew back. We got a dog because I wanted to save our daughter. We all got covid, one after another. I slid the pregnancy test across the stone step to him. I wept over my empty womb. Wounds erupted on my breast, spilling pus and milk. We took a bath together, her doll facedown among the bubbles. I pressed cabbage leaves into my bra. I lay in my bed and refused to get up. I ran off the bus and threw up on the side of a random building. I looked at him instead of the crowd, pearls clicking as they clapped. I lived on Third Street, second floor, the windows wide and full of light. The streets flooded and the town turned green. A line of mucous dripped to my sleeve as she prayed. I went down for the altar call. I floated in the pool, a book held above my head. I lay on his office floor, writing a story. We talked about what to name the dog. The world was yellow and I was born.
Powerful poem. The backwards order worked great.
Publish a book of these! I will be your first paying fan.